


mountains and valleys

by futuredescending



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Hidden Talents, M/M, Origami, Slow Burn, brief mention of torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-15
Updated: 2016-08-15
Packaged: 2018-07-19 08:27:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7353436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/futuredescending/pseuds/futuredescending
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“If you make a thousand of these, then your heart’s greatest desire will come true. That’s how the legend goes,” Mrs Moto tells Eggsy, holding up his somewhat lopsided crane next to her perfectly crisp-edged one. “But it did fuck all for Sadako, and it’s never happened for anyone I knew, so consider it a load of bollocks.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	mountains and valleys

**Author's Note:**

  * For [marginaliana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marginaliana/gifts).



Eggsy is twelve when he first learns. He is on the cusp of adolescence, churning with hormones, and his mum doesn’t know what to do with him.

She works three jobs just to make ends meet and they cannot afford any of the extracurricular programmes Eggsy’s school offers. Dean is just starting to edge into the picture so he is still nice, and his mum wants to spend whatever scraps of time she can find for herself with a charming bloke who makes her feel good rather than an unpredictable, prepubescent child.

The stretches of time between school and supper prove to be dangerous ones for Eggsy. He's constantly bored and angry. Sometimes he has his mates and they can go play footie, but most of the time, he doesn’t. He gets into a lot of trouble during those long afternoons, mostly petty stealing and vandalisation. In fact, it is an act of intended vandalisation that leads him to meeting Mrs Moto.

He had stolen a can of spray paint from the hardware store and was fully intending on using it to tag the side of a building when an old woman pops her head out of the window right next to him and nearly causes him to aim the canister at her face instead.

“That better not be the side of my flat you’re defacing!”

Terrified and defencive for it, he shoots back with, “Yeah, what’s it to you, old bat?”

She remains unimpressed. “Kid, my childhood home, sisters, and parents got vaporised by the Big One, then I had to come here, eat your fried food, and get cancer. I’ve _seen_ some shit. Now you want to scribble on my house? Are you a young Picasso?”

Eggsy frowns. “No.”

“Rembrandt? Monet? Van Gogh?”

“Wha?”

“Then stay the fuck away.”

“Fuck you.” He scowls, but he is already running with his tail between his legs, suitably chastened.

Naturally, because he is a dumb little shit, he comes back the next day with his spray paints to exact his revenge, but Mrs Moto is waiting for him, parked outside her front door with a tank of oxygen by her side. She looks like a tiny, frail bird perched against the wall. Though her face is as smooth and unlined as a riverbed stone, her eyes are sharp and bright, her hair is liberally touched with grey.

“Get inside,” she tells him. “Or I’ll phone the police.”

With little other choice, Eggsy follows her into a home that is sparse in furnishings but very clean. She makes him take off his scuffed secondhand trainers, then sits him down on the floor in front of a low wooden table with a cup of rice tea, a plate of biscuits, and many, many sheets of vividly colourful paper.

Mrs Moto teaches him the preliminary bases and folds: valleys, mountains, pleats, kites, and reverses, and then the more challenging sinks, squashes, rabbit ears, and petals. She teaches him how to make a paper box, then a heart, and then a crane.

“If you make a thousand of these, then your heart’s greatest desire will come true. That’s how the legend goes,” she tells Eggsy, holding up his somewhat lopsided crane next to her perfectly crisp-edged one. “But it did fuck all for Sadako, and it’s never happened for anyone I knew, so consider it a load of bollocks.”

That summer, he spends the rest of his afternoons in her flat. She gives him books on origami and the occasional reminiscence on her long and fascinating life after the war living in a former enemy’s country, from her fuckboy late husband to her children now grown and scattered to different parts of the world.

Then as the air starts to cool, Mrs Moto’s health takes a turn for the worse, until one day she is carried out of her flat by emergency responders and she never returns.

 

_____

 

Like gymnastics, Eggsy enjoys it because it helps him focus and gives him an outlet for all his unbridled energy. His life is chaotic, but there is an elegance and simplicity in a clean, sharp fold. He makes a lot of boxes, stars, and geometric shapes. He tries to make a thousand cranes but only gets through eight before Dean yells at him for wasting so much paper.

Nice paper is difficult to come by though, so Eggsy mostly makes do with whatever bits and bobs he reclaims from rubbish bins. Instead of revising or taking notes, he uses his notebook paper to make little animals to impress girls and, once, a boy with pretty eyes and lips.

“What the fuck is this fairy shit?” he sneers before crumpling up Eggsy’s flower and tossing it into a puddle.

After that, Eggsy learns to keep certain things secret.

He unwittingly gains a deeper grasp on angles and dimensions, which later serve him well on his marksmanship exams during basic. His senior officers think he should apply for sniper training. In the end, it doesn’t matter because he quits the marines altogether when his mum calls him up in hysterics.

After that, he stops for a long, long time. There is Daisy to care for, Dean’s fists to deflect or accept, and money to earn (legally and otherwise). There are birds and—more discreetly—blokes, to pull at the clubs, and buildings and stairs and walls to bound off of, wishing his feet never had to touch the earth again.

 

_____

 

It isn’t until Harry goes to see a climate change professor and ends up in a months-long coma that Eggsy faintly remembers something about wishes and a thousand cranes. By then, he’s worried sick about the fate of the only man who ever gave him a chance.

Harry is so pale and still in the hospital bed. His neck is held in a stiff brace and there is a tube down his throat breathing for him. He is a far cry from the confident and dapper gentleman that first greeted Eggsy outside the police station and then proceeded to lay waste to Dean’s gang in a pub without so much as causing a wrinkle to his posh tailored suit.

Merlin tells him that Harry would want Eggsy to continue doing his best in his training, but every minute not spent studying for exams, training a very stubborn pug, and restraining himself from punching Charlie in the face is spent at Harry’s bedside.

He finally reads up on Sasaki Sadako and how she knew she wasn’t going to finish her thousand cranes before she could wish herself recovered from cancer, so she wished for world peace instead. Her classmates may have finished her cranes for her, but as it turned out, she still hadn’t gotten her wish because the world is just as shitty as ever. Maybe it was because the cranes had to come from one maker. Maybe the maker had to really believe in it. Maybe it was, like Mrs Moto said, all a bunch of bollocks.

He may not be as smart as Roxy or as educated as Charlie, but he’s not that dumb shit kid he’d been once upon a time thinking that folding a bunch of paper cranes is going to actually change anything. Nevertheless, he asks for a bunch of kami paper from Kingsman’s staff, and though he gets several strange looks, they provide him with paper of all colours and patterns.

It takes awhile to remember how to make a crane. His fingers feel stiff and clumsy and he second guesses himself. He ruins many a square piece through trial and error. Eventually he has to watch a few YouTube videos to jog his memory, and slowly and painstakingly, the first ugly paper crane is shaped into existence. He places that one on the table at Harry’s bedside when no one is around to witness it and takes it with him when he leaves like it’s a shameful secret.

Once begun, he remembers how soothing and meditative folding paper can be. Against the soundtrack of medical machines tracking Harry’s vitals, he measures, folds corners to edges or other corners, and creases the paper. His mind quiets. He doesn’t think about Harry never waking up again or him never winning the Lancelot position. 

Eggsy doesn’t have a whole lot of free time, but somehow he gets through nearly one hundred paper cranes before Harry wakes up with no lasting ill effects, ready to continue his mission of finding missing celebrities and tracking down his friend’s killer.

Embarrassed, he manages to quickly confiscate all the cranes he made before Harry can find them, stuffs them into a box, and wedges it into the bottom of his locker where he proceeds to forget about it for the rest of training.

 

_____

 

He fails the dog test. Harry and him trade vicious words, and then Harry goes off to die.

The world almost ends too, but Eggsy barely notices, blinded by rage and driven by grief.

He kills hundreds of people, stops Valentine, has raunchy, adrenaline-fuelled sex with a Swedish princess, rescues a bunch of kidnapped celebrities, then goes home and sleeps for two days straight, curled around JB’s warm little body, too exhausted and heartsick to dream.

By the time he wakes up, Merlin tells him that though the world is in rough shape, the Statesmen managed to get a message through: they found Harry. He’s harder to kill than he looks.

 

_____

 

It is deja vu all over again: Harry comatose in the medical ward, suspended in an uncertain fate, and Eggsy holding perpetual vigil by his side.

Harry is almost unrecognisable because half his head is swathed in bandages. The doctors say he was lucky. Kingsman’s bulletproof glasses took the brunt of the impact and slowed the bullet down considerably for all that it had been fired at point blank range. But a sharp blow to the head is still a sharp blow to the head. The eye was a loss. There had been brain bleed and building pressure that went on for too long beneath a hot Kentucky sun. Even if Harry survived the initial gunshot wound, there is no guarantee he’ll make it through the aftermath, much less regain consciousness.

Eggsy finds his old, forgotten box of paper cranes he had begun on Harry’s first go-around in the medical ward when he’d been cleaning out his locker in the recruits’ dormitory. He hadn’t the chance to when he initially failed out, too angry at himself and Kingsman to do much more than stomp out the front door and seize an opportunity when presented with one.

It sits, now, opened in his lap. Most of the cranes are a bit squashed from his prior rough treatment. He counts 87 of them.

There’s 913 to go, he can’t help but think.

 

_____

 

He knows it’s stupid, but continuously folding a series of paper cranes gives him something to do other than replay every horrible word they said to each other. It helps to calm his mind and rapidly beating heart after he has another night terror and finds himself by Harry’s side in the middle of the night when he doesn’t want to go back to sleep.

 

_____

 

He gets up to 257 and starts organising them into long garlands. The Kingsman staff have become aware of what he is doing by now because it’s hard to hide that many paper cranes. They offer to help, but he rejects it. He’s got to do it himself, he tells them, though he doesn’t want to admit it is because there is a small, foolish part of him that hopes the whole stupid notion will work and he doesn’t want to jinx his chances.

 

_____

 

He takes care of Dean, moves his mum and Daisy into a nice house in an even nicer neighbourhood, goes on cleanup missions for Merlin to Bhutan and Indonesia and South Africa, and then comes home, sits by Harry’s side, and makes more paper cranes.

 

_____

 

He makes it past the halfway mark, 531, when Kingsman elects Percival, Roxy’s sponsor and, Eggsy learns, also her uncle, to the Arthur position. The other knights all unanimously vote to give the title of Percival to Eggsy, and though it doesn’t sit quite right, he doesn’t dare suggest taking Galahad’s title instead. That one still belongs to Harry, Eggsy furiously argues, and no one is keen to disagree, at least for the time being.

 

_____

 

He is up to 750 cranes. The world has finally found its legs again after V-Day and most countries have elected new leaders.

His hands are soaked in blood now, heavily callused from all the guns he wields, the incoming blows he deflects or delivers, and the hard surfaces he lands on during the course of running from or towards his enemies.

His hands steal and conceal and seduce for information or deception.

His hands do many ugly things, but this, continuously folding and turning and folding again, is still unsoiled by all the other parts of his life. It reminds him that his hands can still make beautiful things too.

 

_____

 

He finishes the thousandth crane and makes a wish. Harry does not wake up.

Eggsy isn’t sure what he expected, but certainly not the cold, crushing despair that permeates his chest and leeches all the vibrant colours from his vision. The last low flame of his hope is finally extinguished.

He hangs up the final garland of cranes he has made. Harry’s room is practically drowning in them now. When he takes a step back, the full scope of one thousand cranes of all (muted) colours strung up along the walls is stunning. Hopeful. Useless.

He moves back to Harry’s side, brushes back a rebellious curl that always manages to find its way across Harry’s forehead, and kisses that precise spot because he hasn’t earned the right to kiss Harry’s lips.

“I’m sorry,” Eggsy whispers because he doesn’t want to say goodbye.

But when he leaves, he knows he’s not coming back.

 

_____

 

He’s on his third month into a planned nine-month deep cover mission embedded within a dangerous group of mercenaries who have embroiled themselves in the Syrian war when Merlin leaves him a brief, heavily encrypted message: _Galahad is awake_.

It’s like someone has walked over his grave. For one heart-stopping moment, all the feelings and memories from his old life are churned back up to the surface and threaten to choke him. It takes everything in his power not to abandon his cover and jump on the next plane bound for London there and then.

But Merlin trusts him not to do something so rash and irresponsible, and Harry would be disappointed in him if he fell back into his old reckless, impulsive ways. He’s a Kingsman agent now and he still has a mission to complete, so Eggsy gathers up all his tumultuous feelings and pushes them down into a deep, dark part of himself that contains all other ruinous things, and gets on with it.

 

_____

 

It takes almost another year for Eggsy to touch down on English soil again. The cooler air, grey skies, and abundant moisture on his skin are alien sensations after so much dry heat and sand. The crowded buildings of London and its narrow streets teeming with people make him feel claustrophobic, but he’d sooner bite off his own tongue than let his anxiety show on his face anymore these days.

His mum starts crying when she sees him and that hurts, but it hurts far, far worse when Daisy shies away from him because she doesn’t recognise him and barely remembers she has a big brother at all.

In the time he's been gone, his mum has been seeing someone new and it’s serious. The bloke, Rick, seems like a decent one so far, at least. Good steady job as some sort of researcher. Loves Daisy like she were his own, which irks Eggsy because Daisy runs to Rick now when she used to run to her brother.

At least JB still remembers him. He’s angry at Eggsy at first, snuffling at him and skittering away whenever he tries to pet him, but then eventually waddles onto Eggsy’s chest when he’s lying on the sofa and they both kip together for an afternoon.

He’s changed, he knows. Time and experience have carved away the last of his softness. He is leaner and more angular. His accent shapes his words into polished, glass-cut syllables. There is a hard flatness to his eyes that did not exist before.

“Welcome home, Percival,” Arthur says to him. “After completing a successful mission of such unanticipated complexity and duration, you’ve earned yourself some well-deserved time off.”

“Thank you, sir.” What Arthur really means, he knows, is that he has spent so long, almost too long, undercover and now needs to get his head back on straight before he can be trusted with another assignment. Fair dues, that. What he doesn’t look forward to is the endless parade of mandatory counselling sessions and psychological assessments that stand in the way of his next mission.

Then Arthur says, with his gaze rapt upon Eggsy’s face as if he were looking for something, “You just missed Galahad, I’m afraid. He left for South America early this morning.” 

Eggsy tries not to visibly tense up. In fact, he tries not to react at all. He’s since learned more about how the most recent Arthur came to power. When he had held Eggsy’s title, Arthur had been one of Kingsman’s best interrogators, missing nothing, able to seemingly meander innocuously around a teased out weakness before slipping in as precise as a knife between one’s ribs. After V-Day, the Table had behaved in a rather reactionary manner when it came time to elect its new king, the popular sentiment being that, with Harry down, the then-Percival was the next most ideal candidate, able to assure there would be no more traitors among their ranks. Many a knight began to regret such a hasty choice later, though, when those keen eyes also did not spare them.

Arthur also does not spare Eggsy now, the favoured recruit of Galahad, his niece’s best friend, and his own inadvertent successor, steely-eyed gaze boring into him within an almost bland, unobtrusive face. “He passed his field assessment three months ago.”

“That’s fantastic to hear,” Eggsy says evenly, because it’s the truth. He can’t imagine Harry any other way, and he doesn’t think Harry could either. “I’ll have to congratulate him when I see him next.”

Arthur nods, and in the blink of an eye, the pressure of his all-seeing scrutiny is lifted and Eggsy finds himself breathing just a little easier. “Rest up, then. Merlin has your R&R schedule. That will be all, Percival.”

 

_____

 

His hands make abortive movements to his glasses several times before he tells himself he’s being a twat and to just get on with it. There are a simulated series of rings to indicate a call is trying to connect even though Kingsman only tend to use their mobiles when among civilians.

He’s about to cut it off altogether when there is a click, followed by a pause of silence that feels like it goes on forever, and then Harry’s voice fills his ears, even warmer than Eggsy remembers. “Hello, Percival. It’s been a long time.”

The very reality of it hits him then. Harry is alive. He takes in a sharp, shaky breath but can’t seem to draw enough air into his lungs.

“Eggsy?” Harry asks, concern evident in his tone.

“Hi,” he finally manages to say. It’s a pathetic utterance, barely squeezed from his throat before he is unable to say anything else.

Maybe Harry senses Eggsy’s fragile hold over his composure, because he starts to talk about nothing of importance. It’s late evening in Venezuela so Eggsy must have either gotten up very early or is still up very late. The weather is hot and humid. The electricity regularly cuts out for hours at a time and basic supplies are starting to become difficult to find. There is a simmering sense of resentment among the people there, but even with the country on the edge of revolt, Harry had watched from his hotel window as two young lovers took a stroll down on the street below and looked as if they hadn’t a care in the world but for each other.

Hearing that rich, steady cadence paint a gentle portrait of budding romance finally calms Eggsy down enough to dislodge the hard lump in his throat. “Thanks.”

“Of course.”

“I’m still jetlagged, I think,” he lies.

“I often find the most difficult thing about long-term missions is the part that comes after, trying to return to some semblance of normalcy.”

Eggsy wonders what passes for normal at Kingsman, because nothing has been that way for him for a very long time. “I still feel like I’m in a waking dream.”

“That, too, shall eventually pass.” There is a pause, long enough for Eggsy to notice the lapse, before Harry says, “Congratulations, by the way. I don’t think I ever got to tell you that.”

Understandably so, but Harry saying it now feels oddly shallow, though Eggsy can’t exactly say why. “I should be the one saying that to you. Returning from the dead seems like the greater feat by far.”

“I wasn’t quite that far gone,” Harry says. “Though Merlin wants to know what treasured thing I once sacrificed to the devil in exchange for my continued existence.”

“Yeah? What’d you say?”

“His hair. The devil never explicitly said it had to be something of mine.”

Eggsy finds himself grinning in the dark despite himself. “Surprised Merlin hasn’t tried to kill you himself by now.”

“Who says he hasn’t?”

Fair point, though he likes to think Merlin would have meant it in the most loving way possible. “So when do you think you’ll finish?”

“If all goes well, and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t, by the end of next week at the latest. You’re due for some quality time off, no?”

“Something like that, yeah. Won’t be going anywhere for awhile yet if Morgana has anything to say about it.”

“My condolences. We should put something on the books then,” Harry lightly suggests. “I haven’t been a very good mentor to you, have I?”

It isn’t that Harry was a bad mentor so much as an unintentionally _absent_ one, and Eggsy almost says that it’s no big deal—he’s used to it. “It seems time and circumstances have conspired against us.”

“There’s another wise saying that I am very fond of, Eggsy.”

“What wisdom shall you bestow upon me now, O Master?”

“Fuck fate.”

This time Eggsy is taken off guard and a surprised bubble of laughter slips out of his mouth. He _is_ tired after all, and this is...nice. He feels calmer. He thinks he could even close his eyes and finally get some sleep, like some restless part of him he hadn’t known existed is now settling down in quiet contentment. “Yeah, alright. I think I can pencil you in somewhere.”

 

_____

 

Rest and relaxation is anything but. Sessions with Morgana are akin to sustained, low-grade torture, and Eggsy soon comes to experience firsthand why she is the most feared of Kingsman’s staff after Merlin.

“We give this time to agents after difficult or extremely prolonged missions because they need a healthy outlet for decompression. No one can do this 24/7, Percival,” she tells him.

“Believe it or not, I had a lot of downtime in Syria,” Eggsy says, resisting the urge to pick at his nails. They are still gritty and cracked. He needs a manicure. He used to think those were only for girls, but now he knows that well-groomed nails are as much a part of a gentleman’s upkeep as ironed shirts and polished shoes. “There was a lot of hurry up and wait.”

“You had to constantly be on guard,” Morgana says in that neutral, irritatingly soothing tone she has that probably wouldn’t be unsettled by anything short of a zombie apocalypse, and even then, Eggsy isn’t so sure. “Not just for immediate physical dangers in your environment, but against the the constant threat of exposure. For sixteen months, you had to live, breathe, and think like someone you are not without cessation. That’s an exhausting endeavour to do even for just a few hours, nevermind months.”

“I feel fine.” Eggsy shrugs.

“Do you enjoy any hobbies or activities outside of Kingsman?”

“Did a lot of free-running once. And gymnastics. But I do those here.” With more space and access to greater resources, they’ve become a part of his workout routine. Admittedly, some of the fun and spontaneity have gone out of the them for it, but they are still activities he enjoys.

“Something that you don’t do specifically for your Kingsman training then.”

He opens his mouth to say there’s not much else, but then he remembers.

Morgana catches his brief hesitation and leaps on it with a glint in her eye that reminds Eggsy of a bird preparing to dive into the water and spear a fish with its talons. “You don’t have to tell me what it is, but you should think about using this time to rediscover who you are and what you enjoy outside of the work.”

“Why Morgana, are you telling me I need to get a life?” Eggsy asks, arching a brow.

“If it soothes your wounded pride any, you’re hardly the first agent I’ve had to say it to.”

 

_____

 

He’s finally attacking all the boxes that had been sitting untouched in the corner of his bedroom ever since he moved his family into their new home when he finds them: Mrs Moto’s origami books, pages bent at the corners, jackets torn, and all around worse for wear. Still, just flipping through them again brings to mind all those peaceful afternoons bent over the coffee table, folding corners so sharp and precise as to rival a hospital’s. The books even still smell faintly of the jasmine scent Mrs Moto liked to spritz around the flat.

The next day, Eggsy takes Daisy to the art shop. She remains wary of him until he lets her pick as many sheets of kami paper in all the colours and patterns she wants. That afternoon, they sit side by side at the dining room table and Eggsy teaches her how to make a paper box, a heart, and a crane, the same models Mrs Moto first taught him.

When he finishes his crane, he holds it up and dutifully says, “Did you know that when you make a thousand of these, your heart’s greatest wish will come true?”

Daisy gives him a look that is filled with scepticism and furrowed brows, and Eggsy is saddened to realise she’s become so cynical already, but there’s a soft note of hopefulness in her voice when she asks, “Really?”

“Absolutely,” he tells her. He’ll make sure of it. “But you’ve got to make them all yourself, and you’ve really got to believe it.”

“I can do that,” she declares. “It’s easy.”

“Well, then you had best get started.”

Daisy has very confident, dextrous fingers for a little girl, and though the first few cranes are shaky, wrinkled things, she folds almost 15 of them by supper.

“Only 985 left to go,” he can’t help but tease.

It’s worth it to see the defiant look she gets in her eye.

 

_____

 

He folds an owl for Merlin and sets it on his desk next to his perpetually half-full mug of cold tea.

For Roxy, he makes a bouquet of paper lilies, and she tells him she prefers them to the real thing (she has some fierce allergies).

He gifts Morgana with several foxes at their next session. “‘Cos you’re sly as,” he tells her with a wink.

“Flirting is a standard evasive tactic with you,” she still tells him after setting up the foxes on her bookshelf. “Let’s talk about it, shall we?”

Bugger.

 

_____

 

Harry’s estimate is only a little off in that he’s home early the week after next, but he only gets to stay in London for less than 24 hours before a rapidly escalating situation in Russia that requires his particular skillset and prior knowledge of the players has him setting off again.

He sends his apologies to Eggsy while en route, and it shows up as lines of tiny green text at the bottom righthand corner of Eggsy’s view when he wears his glasses.

_Next time. - G_

 

_____

 

“How you have patience for this, I don’t know,” Roxy complains as she attempts, for the third or maybe the seventh time, to create a paper flower from the book Eggsy brought in. It’s already a sorry looking sight, resembling an accordion with many erroneous creases marring the paper until Roxy herself can’t tell which pleat she should be using as her next location point.

Finally, she makes a sound of disgust and tosses the wrinkled paper on the table, folding her arms across her chest with a huff. “This is supposed to be a soothing activity, really?”

“It’s like meditation,” Eggsy says, drawing a corner to a centre pleat and and creasing the fold by drawing a fingernail down its spine. “All your troubles are reduced down to this simple bit of paper, and all you’ve got to do is fold it a bit in the right places to create something lovely.” As if to emphasise this, he gently cups the last folds and offers up the completed red paper rose in his palm.

“I like to relax with a good spot of shooting myself. Or kicking your arse on the mats,” Roxy says, but takes the rose and puts it on the corner of her desk next to her cup of pens. The lilies sit in a vase on her bookshelf. They’re the only pieces of decoration she allows in her otherwise severely spartan office.

 

_____

 

Finally, Eggsy gets cleared for active field duty again and Harry returns to London just four hours before he departs for Kuala Lumpur. Between mandatory mission debriefs and medical exams (Harry) or mission prep and preflight checks (Eggsy), they don’t get to see each other at all, like they are destined to forever be two ships passing each other in the night. Fuck Fate indeed.

It’s when he’s going through his case in search of sleepwear that he finds it: a flash of orange that tumbles out from between his clothes, almost lost forever to the gap between the seat and the cabin wall were it not for his quick reflexes.

Eggsy brings the slightly crushed paper up for closer study and is about to unfurl it, thinking it something he must have scribbled some idle note on and crumpled up, before he realises how crisp and precise the folds of the paper actually are and that the shape of it is no accident.

Upon closer study, he realises he’s holding what looks sort of like an orange paper frog with springy hind legs.

Huh.

He places it on the edge of the seat and presses on the base of the frog, compressing the thick folded paper legs. When he releases his finger, the frog does a neat little hop across the leather.

Smiling a bit, he carefully tucks the frog into a hidden pocket in his suitcase.

 

_____

 

Daisy completes her 241st crane nearly a month after Eggsy first put the paper in her hands. By now, her cranes are perfect with clean edges and sharp corners. Eggsy feels a bit bad because JB had eaten about 25 of them when they accidently left them out on the floor overnight.

“How many more to go now?” she asks.

“759.”

Daisy glares at the most recently finished crane sitting between them. “Buggering shit!”

“Daisy Baker!” Michelle says, popping her head out from the kitchen to stare at her youngest child, aghast. “I did not just hear you say that!”

“What?” Daisy says, eyes going all big and round to make her appear innocent and adorable. “Eggsy gets to say it all the time!”

The little brat.

Now Michelle turns her intimidating glare upon her eldest. “Not under this roof anymore, he don’t.”

“Traitor!” he hisses at her when Michelle returns to her cooking.

Daisy just sits back and looks at him smugly. “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”

“Do you even know what that means?”

“It means Mummy is gonna make you do more chores if you say bad words.”

Eggsy blinks. Yeah, that’s about right. 

 

_____

 

They finally set aside a time for dinner at one of Harry’s favourite Italian restaurants. When the day arrives, Eggsy spends an inordinate amount of time deciding what to wear. When he’s not required to physically be at Kingsman, he chooses comfort over style, bundling himself in layers because he’s still always so cold. But the questions plague him: Will Harry wear a suit? How posh is the restaurant?

Yet obviously Harry will wear a suit because a) he always wears suits when not in his home and b) he’ll be coming straight from Kingsman, but if Eggsy wears one when he’s just coming from his house, will it look like he purposely dressed up for the occasion like a date?

The thought doesn’t bother him as much as he thinks it ought to.

In the end, he wears a suit because he can’t bear the thought of Harry’s first time seeing him since before Kentucky would be of him looking anything less than the accomplished Kingsman agent he has become.

He waits for Harry at the bottom of the shop’s front steps not unlike a nervous teenager waiting for his first date (there he goes again with those analogies), clenching and unclenching his fists at his sides. But no matter how much Eggsy braces himself for Harry’s arrival, when he finally sees him step out of the shop, he feels his stomach drop into freefall.

Eggsy didn’t think he could ever forget what Harry looked like given how frequently the man occupies his thoughts, dreams, and, more often of late, nightmares, but seeing him again feels like seeing him for the first time. Everything he knows about Harry comes into full colour like a slowly developing polaroid: the slim, graceful length of him that is highlighted by his perfectly cut suit. The neatly styled brown hair that is a little less brown now, and sophisticatedly touched with grey at the temples. The thick rimmed glasses that pull his face into sharp relief: his clefted chin and defined jaw, though the latter has softened with age, and his ever piercing brown eyes—the left one looking just as real as the right—that have probably conveyed more things than Harry could ever hope to put into words.

Harry reaches the bottom of the stairs and comes to stand in front of him. His expression is mostly...indeterminate, but Eggsy likes to think there is warmth and fondness in his gaze at the very least. “Hello, Eggsy.”

“Hi.” He can’t help but smile, a small thing that nevertheless tugs the corners of his mouth wide because Harry is alive and evidence of that is literally standing before him. He wants to reach and touch just to be sure, but can’t find the courage. And because the moment is swiftly veering towards awkward, he adds, in what is surely going to haunt him for the rest of the night as being one of the most rubbish things ever said, “It’s nice to see you.”

But Harry just mirrors his small smile. “Likewise.” Eggsy likes to think they would continue being two idiots standing on the pavement grinning dosily at each other all night were it not for Harry’s polite but pointed glance down the road. “Shall we?”

“Yeah, okay!” he replies with too much enthusiasm as he falls into step beside Harry.

They walk together in comfortable silence like they're two upper-class characters from some revered and dry as fuck piece of great literature enjoying a casual stroll about town. The last time they had walked side by side together like this, Eggsy had been wearing his obnoxious club outfit that Roxy later told him was the greatest sartorial atrocity she had the misfortune of laying her eyes upon. He remembers really liking—to the point of immense pride—his togs at the time, but now he looks back on the outfit and can’t help but mentally cringe. How young and foolish he must have seemed.

“Do you recall the last time we walked together?” Harry asks as if he were reading Eggsy’s mind. “And you wanted to learn how to ‘talk properly’?”

“And you said that wasn’t even the point of being a gentleman. Learned how to talk proper after all, though.”

“You did,” Harry agrees. “But you learned the rest of it too, and in spite of my best intentions, almost completely without my help. You _are_ a true gentleman now, Eggsy, and I’m so proud of you. I only wish I could have told you that earlier.”

Despite the way Harry’s words make him feel hot and flushed all over, Eggsy shakes his head, keeping his gaze pinned to the toes of his polished oxfords falling across the pavement before him. “That’s not true. I owe you everything. You gave me something to work towards when I didn’t think I had anything at all. Even now with everything I do, I still ask myself if it’s something you’d approve of.”

The look Harry gives him is troubled, but they are interrupted by the abrupt arrival at their destination, a small little hole in the wall that emits mouthwatering scents of garlic and tomato. It’s bursting with other people, and there’s barely enough room to move around, but of course Harry knows the owner from way back and they are afforded prime real estate in front of the picture windows at a tiny little table with red gingham print tablecloth. It’s all terribly charming and not at all intimidating as he initially feared. In fact, Harry and Eggsy are the fanciest dressed ones there.

But once the waitress leaves after Harry’s ordered them a bottle of wine, Harry picks back up their conversation like no time has elapsed at all. “I haven’t always made the best or wisest decisions, Eggsy. The sheer amount of time I’ve spent in Kingsman’s medical ward over the last two years ought to attest to that,” he says with no small amount of wryness before returning once more to a sober tone. “You don’t need my approval. You’re your own man, and by all accounts, you do just fine.”

There was a time when Eggsy would have furiously refuted that assertion, even to Harry himself. But now he can look back upon the last two years of his life, all that he’s seen and done, all the decisions he’s had to make and how alone he often felt, and realise Harry is right. He’s been standing on his own for awhile.

“I like to think there are still things you can teach me,” he confesses, staring down at the little artificial candle that flickers unevenly. “That is, if you even want.”

“I would like that,” Harry says quietly.

Harry’s continuing education starts with how to eat spaghetti without getting splatters of sauce all over one’s clothes, and without resorting to the indignity of a bib. It apparently involves carefully winding all the noodles onto one’s fork against a spoon while it’s still on the plate instead of simply letting them hang from one’s mouth like a walrus. It also takes significantly more time to eat, which is usually why, when not in polite company, Eggsy still simply inhales his food when he’s short on time and starving. But here with such pleasant company, food, and surroundings, with no other place to be and no other place he’d rather be, he’s just fine with stretching their dinner across several hours and well into the night.

 

_____

 

It had been Arthur’s suggestion in the first place. Kingsman agents tended to approach their careers in Swiss Army like fashion, pursuing a few specialisations that made them more suitable for certain missions. Roxy, with her poli-sci background, was focusing on diplomacy. James, the previous Lancelot before Roxy, had been a notable tracker. Harry had, once upon a time, been nicknamed _Charmer_ for the sheer number of honeypot missions he was often assigned, much to Eggsy’s dismay, but rebellious little shit that Harry was, he announced his impatience with such a specialty by employing more vinegar than honey. These days, he was particularly adept at infil/exfil.

And Arthur, when he had been Percival, had been Kingsman’s best sharpshooter in addition to being a brilliant interrogator, leaving behind a vacuum upon his ascension to the throne. With prior military training and proven test scores already, marksmanship seemed like an excellent specialisation for Eggsy to take up in his stead. He’s been training at it, on and off, for months. It’s capped off by a 72-hour non-stop exam, the tail end upon which he is now about to complete.

“Target 1800 metres away,” Eggsy says, eye practically glued to his scope to focus on the target in his sights bathed in a swath of green. He’s caked in mud, leaves, and grime from the forest and he’s so exhausted that he’s absolutely wired awake now. “Elevation 200 metres. Northwest crosswinds 25kph. Permission to fire?”

“ _Permission granted_ ,” Merlin says in his ear.

Eggsy breathes in, holds it, and squeezes the trigger on his sniper rifle. 1800 metres away, the target’s head explodes in a burst of cotton puffs that are carried away by the wind. Apparently Kingsman isn’t attempting for a realistic finish. Still, he practically slumps to the earth and exhales the last of the pressure that had been sitting on his shoulders before it is swiftly replaced with a buoyant euphoria. He’s done it.

“ _Congratulations, Percival_ ,” Arthur chimes in. “ _You are an official Kingsman-certified sniper_.”

Later that evening, after many, many celebratory drinks with Roxy that probably weren’t a good idea on top of his sleep deprivation, Eggsy stumbles back into his office at Kingsman and finds a golden yellow paper dragon sitting on his desk. It’s a more intricate design with several folds and narrow angles to give the dragon its fearsome amphibian shape. When Eggsy peers at it more closely to study its expert craftsmanship, he notices the subtle scale print cleverly woven into the paper.

He carefully puts the dragon on his office bookshelf where it can keep its orange frog counterparts company. There are seven frogs now, one each for the last seven assignments he’s been sent on, all mysteriously hidden among his belongings without him ever noticing and containing no clues as to who their maker could be.

 

_____

 

He finally looks up the animal symbolism in Japanese culture.

The frog is a symbol of good fortune for people on their travels.

The dragon symbolizes power, wisdom, and mastery.

 

_____

 

If Eggsy thought the life of a Kingsman involved endless car chases, gun shooting, and thrilling heroics...well, those expectations had been quickly put to bed. The downtime between missions, which could be anywhere from non-existent, as an agent literally moved from completing one mission and flying straight on to begin another, to months, depending on other circumstances such as, oh, enforced R&R and prolonged psychological assessment of which Eggsy was intimately familiar. Thankfully this isn’t a months-long sabbatical, but it is going on day eight now and Eggsy can feel himself becoming restless.

That afternoon, he holes himself up in Kingsman’s rather impressive library, ostensibly to brush up on his languages, but in reality he’s folding up banknotes into a series of amusing hats for old Lizzie, when Harry startles him by, well, showing up.

In person. In the flesh. Wearing a new charcoal grey suit with a subtle plaid print and a dark sapphire blue tie that Eggsy wants to drink. “I was told you were hiding here.”

Their schedules have been so conflicting that Harry’s unexpected physical presence almost feels surreal, and Eggsy wonders if he’s hallucinating for half a second before he’s neatly slamming his books on Lizzie’s face, crushing an afternoon’s worth of work. “Yeah. Yep. I’m just...practising my French.”

“How’s that going?”

“Well, I can convincingly warn people about where a very small subset of domestic animals are located in the immediate vicinity.”

“Very useful for those situations when you need to go undercover as a gamekeeper.”

“Never say never!” Eggsy chirps while some interior voice in his head that sounds suspiciously like Merlin is positively groaning, _Oh gods, shut up, you fool_.

“If you aren’t too busy preparing for your future Francophile endeavours, I was wondering if you would perhaps like to put a bit of it into hands-on practise?”

“What, my French?” Eggsy blinks stupidly, then feels his cheeks grow hot, mind suddenly flickering through a hundred _hands-on_ opportunities involving all derivatives of the word.

Harry, bless him, politely ignores Eggsy’s idiocy and says, “It’s a beautiful day. I thought you might like to accompany me outdoors for another lesson?”

“Oh! Well...yeah. I mean, yes, absolutely!” he agrees with maybe too much eagerness, partly because he was ready to drill a hole through his own skull to relieve the boredom and partly because London bridge would have to fall before Eggsy declined an invitation so spend another rare and precious moment with Harry.

But half an hour later, when he finds himself uneasily straddling a large white gelding about ten hands tall named Napoleon’s Downfall, he’s second guessing his life choices. “I know I said I like a lot of horsepower but this ain’t exactly what I had in mind.”

From his own pale cream mare (named Princess Buttercup, someone needs to take away this man’s naming privileges, jesus christ), Harry just smirks at him. “I enjoy the riding trails here when I have the time. I thought you’d like to see them as well.”

They set out at a leisurely pace along the scenic trails veined through Kingsman’s lands. Harry’s mare leads the way, and Napoleon, despite his fearsome moniker, rather sedately follows behind. Being able to openly ogle Harry in his tall riding boots and his perfect posture bouncing lightly up and down in front of him is a whole other treat of its own. “I had no idea any of this existed.”

In fact, Eggsy had never even considered the fact that Kingsman had its own horses and stables, but in retrospect, given how bloody posh the whole pastime was, why wouldn’t they have done? Not only does Kingsman breed its own horses, Harry informs him, but each agent has the opportunity to personally own and train one of their own. 

“Nobody told me!” Eggsy says.

“You’ll have to talk to the stables manager when it’s foaling season, though I’d leave out the part about wanting to name your future horse ‘Batman Batman’.”

“Yeah, okay, like you’re one to talk, Mr Pickle,” Eggsy scoffs.

He doubles back on his prior enthusiasm for all things equine when he wakes up the next morning with an achingly sore arse and thighs, all without having benefited from any of the fun activities he’d usually associate with such badges of honour. He’s forced to walk bowlegged all day, inducing no small number of sniggers and crude suggestions from his co-workers. And to think he used to be intimidated by this supposedly esteemed and venerable institution.

 

_____

 

“You’re fucking taking the piss!” Eggsy shouts, running a frustrated hand through his hair and dragging it out of its neat Kingsman-approved style. He can’t even begin to care about his mum’s rules on language in the house. As far as he’s concerned, she’s committing the far more egregious offence.

To her credit, Michelle doesn’t say anything or shore up her defences in the wake of his outrage. She just looks at Eggsy sadly, but there’s a calm resolution in her demeanour that means she’s been thinking about this for a long time. “Rick’s been offered the job opportunity of a lifetime. He’d be mad to pass it up.”

“Yeah, but why you and Daisy gotta go with him? And all the way to America? I made this a home for us here!”

“Because he’s a lovely man and I love him,” Michelle says simply, but there’s a bedrock of conviction underscoring her words. “I know you’ve done so much for us, babe, and I’m grateful, I really am...but I don’t want to lose this last shot at happiness. He’s great with Daisy and Daisy loves him. It’s a big move, yeah, but...maybe it’d be nice to have a fresh start, yeah?”

Eggsy feels his heart sink with the truth of it. There’s a lot of memories here for his mum, and most of them haven’t been good despite the fact that things are better now.

But a few months of _better_ don’t make up for years of abuse, loneliness, and despair.

And what it boils down to, he painfully realises, is that he wasn’t enough to make up for Lee’s loss, wasn’t enough to leave Dean for, and he’s not enough to stay for now.

“When,” he starts to say but has to break off in order to swallow back the thickness in his throat, “When would it be?”

“Two months,” his mum says. “If we wanna get Daisy into a good school for next term.”

“So soon.”

Michelle draws close to him and pulls him into her arms, and despite all the tumultuous feelings rolling through him, Eggsy automatically returns her embrace as she whispers in his ear, “Then let’s make the most of our time together. And you had better come visit us all the time, Mr International Tailor Man.”

“I will,” Eggsy promises, burying his face into the crook of her neck like he used to do as a child. He’s not sure it’s going to be a promise he’ll be very good at keeping. The people who have walked out of his life have rarely ever made a reappearance.

 

_____

 

“If this were a movie,” Eggsy says, slurring a bit from the near half-bottle of scotch he’d consumed “I’d find some perfect way to fix everything, like, last minute. I’d fight through London traffic, eventually just leaving my car sitting there in the middle of the road to leg it. I’d break through security and run out onto the platform just to flag down the last train before it pulls out of the station. Rick would find an even better job here. Maybe they can move to a little village far enough away to not be reminded of all the bad stuff, but not so far that I can’t pop in at weekends.”

From wherever he is in Asia, Harry remains silent, but somehow the quality of it, calm and attentive, is reassuring. He listens to Eggsy. He cares. He doesn’t lie and tell Eggsy it will all work out or that he should stop being so selfish.

He doesn’t echo the words that haunt them both now. _This ain’t that kind of movie_.

“Gods, Harry, my family is leaving me. Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for them. What the fuck am I supposed to do now?” he desperately asks.

At last, Harry speaks. “It will take time to realign. There will be parts of your life that are missing. You’ll forget they’re missing until you’ll suddenly, often randomly, be reminded of their absence. Initially, these instances will leave you breathless with agony and your whole life will feel as if it has stopped.”

Though Harry’s voice is as soothing as ever, Eggsy can’t help the hot tears that silently slip down his cheeks.

“Then, slowly, if you are resilient enough—and I very much believe you are, Eggsy—you begin to discover new joys, or perhaps rediscover the old ones. It doesn’t mean you will forget the sorrow, but you will learn that there can be room for happiness too. And when it comes time to remember that loss again, the hurt will be just a little more distant from yourself, and each time thereafter, that distance will grow, until, one day, it will simply sit at the back of your mind like a faded bittersweet memory.”

“That how you did it?”

For a moment, Harry remains silent, but then says in a tone filled with both ruefulness and reassurance, “Still doing it. It’s a lifelong journey, I’m afraid.”

 

_____

 

Among all the towers of sealed cardboard boxes littered across the rooms of the house, Daisy folds her thousandth crane. She’d been going through all sorts of colours, but for this one, she opted for a simple plain white.

“Look at that, you did it!” Eggsy says, grinning from ear to ear, genuinely happy for her accomplishment because it’s nothing to sneeze at, a thousand of those bloody things.

Unlike her brother, Daisy is far from enthused and it swiftly saps the wind from his own sails. “My wish didn’t come true. What a load of bollocks.”

“Oi, language. What do you mean?” Eggsy asks.

“We’re still gonna go to stupid bloody America!” Daisy shouts in a burst of anger, throwing the crane at the floor.

“Hey now, none of that.” Eggsy moves to reclaim the crane before JB can add it to the contents of his stomach. It’s only a little dented, which Eggsy gently tries to press out. With a sigh, he sits back down next to her and holds out her crane. “Change can be scary, but sometimes it’s worth it. I hear you gonna get to live in California where the sun always shines and it’s warm. The Pacific ocean is as pretty as can be, I’ve seen it. You gonna flower there like the Daisy you are.”

She eyes the crane with hesitance before reluctantly taking it back. “Can’t I just stay with you and JB?”

The way she looks at him is like another stab through the heart. “I wish you could, but I think you need mum and Rick more. And they need you too, luv.”

Suddenly he finds himself with a lapful of little sister as Daisy throws herself at him and wraps her arms around his middle, smashing her face into his chest. He can’t help but cling to her just as tightly. “I don’t wanna go!”

“You’ll love it. You’ll have lots of friends and a big house by the ocean and mum said you can have a dog of your own,” he tells her, ignoring the way his voice wavers unsteadily as he considers Daisy’s brilliant impending future that he will only ever get to witness in photographs or be told about over the phone if he’s lucky. “You’re gonna be so happy, babe. You’ll see.”

 

_____

 

It’s almost the same scene he had described to Harry, except in reality, there aren’t any last minute reprieves. Rick doesn’t miraculously find a better job offer in England. On the way to Victoria, they all just suffer through traffic together.

Eggsy walks out with them onto the platform. He hugs and kisses his family for the last time. He shakes Rick’s hand and stoically nods as Rick assures him he will look after them, like he thinks Eggsy’s passing some baton.

He watches as they board one of the older trains and trades funny faces with Daisy through the compartment window until the horns ring out and with a hiss, the train slowly starts to pull out of the station when Daisy frantically pulls open the window and shouts, “Eggsy!”

Hearing her call out, Eggsy takes up a jog to keep up with the moving train. “What? Daisy you need to go sit down.”

“Here!” She shouts and then something white flutters from her hand and glides onto the ground. “I’m still owed one so I’m giving you my wish!”

He picks up the thousandth crane from the ground and looks up, but only sees Daisy’s little hand waving goodbye to him out the window.

 

_____

 

Eggsy immediately goes to the closest pub in order to get completely shitfaced, realises he doesn’t want to go home to an empty house, and has a Kingsman cab drive him all the way up to the mansion by road so he can a) let the breeze from the open window cool his flushed face and b) imbibe even more from the mini-bar installed in the back seat compartment.

It’s late at night when he stumbles into the mansion and no one roams the halls in the wing that houses the agents’ personal offices. It takes a few wrong turns for him to locate his, then a few more minutes for him to recall his passcode, growling when the thing just keeps beeping angrily at him before he realises he’s been trying to get into Roxy’s office for the last five minutes.

Eggsy finally locates the correct door, successfully manages to get it open, and staggers into his office, not bothering to turn on the lights as he shrugs off his wrinkled suit jacket and drops it right in the middle of the floor before moving to the sideboard and fixing himself another glass of scotch.

It’s only as he’s gulping it down without really tasting it that he turns and sees the new paper animal sitting in the middle of his desk. Gold and dark crimson in colour, this one. At first he thinks it’s a giraffe, then wonders if it’s a camel, but neither shapes are quite right.

He snaps a blurry photo of it with his mobile and then sends it to everyone on his contacts list, civilian and Kingsman alike, with an equally confusing caption of _Wtyuidf ia iyt??????_

In seconds, the replies start flooding in, varying from _mate wtf?_ to _Why are you up so late?_ to _You do realise this number is only for emergencies, P._ to just _Eggsy, are you alright?_

Finally, after racking his brains for another ten minutes, it hits him. A llama. It’s a fucking paper llama.

He starts laughing at the absurdity, and then he can’t stop. He’s near hysterical with it until he’s gasping for air and his belly burns with all the alcohol he’s consumed and then he feels ill and he’s choking. He thinks, for a frightening moment, that he’s going to vomit, but in lieu of bringing up booze and bile, an anguished sob emerges from his throat instead.

But just the one, because he clamps a hand over his mouth, immediately and ruthlessly suppressing the devastating feeling that threatens to demolish him. He swallows it back and pushes it deep down to that place inside himself he hasn’t had to use in awhile, not since Syria. It’s still there, still waiting to collect more pain, and it gladly welcomes and holds tight this new burden, promising to keep it safe from prying eyes.

 

_____

 

The Venezuelan President is ousted from office and a new one is elected, another man who promises to fix the economy, end corruption, restore honour back to the people, and essentially anything else a naive and newly elected leader flush off his victory promises to do. Except this President elect has enough close ties to one of Latin America’s most notorious cartels that Kingsman thinks it would be wise if Venezuela has another regime change as soon as possible.

Hence why he is in Caracas, holed up in one of the humid city’s many dilapidated and abandoned high rises, sniper rifle trained on the square below where the elected Valdez will pass through on his way to the Miraflores Palace. At first, Eggsy had worried about crouching on Harry’s turf, but the fluid and changing situation necessitated Eggsy’s specialty rather than his, Harry assured.

He’s killed before, hundreds of times over, but it’s always been in the heat of the moment, always out of self-defence, be it through a press of a button via Merlin or mowing through faceless and nameless hired help who Eggsy forgot as soon as he delivered the lethal blow.

But it is a whole other matter entirely to methodically research, plan, lay the groundwork for, and execute an assassination. It’s all rather against Morgana’s advice, but Eggsy throws himself wholly into his work because his entire life, now, _is_ Kingsman.

It leaves no more time for folding paper, but that’s alright, because he’s never been more focused or dedicated.

The square is filled with people, but they’ve been cordoned off to either side of the road in order to make a clear path for Valdez’s cavalcade. Their cheers are so loud, Eggsy can hear the roar of them rise from street level all the way up to where he is stationed.

“Valdez is 800 metres away,” Meg, his handler, alerts him.

Eggsy uses his scope to sight down the road for the line of cars that turn the corner and slowly approach the square. Valdez’s aides are tossing white objects from their cars to the eager crowds, and upon closer examination, Eggsy realises they’re loo rolls.

The centre car contains Valdez in an open top that allows him to stand up and wave to his people. Next to him are his wife and young 10 year-old son.

“Shit,” Eggsy says, observing with dismay as Valdez reaches down to hoist his son into his arms so they can both wave at the crowds together. “His family is there with him in the car. There’s no way I’m getting a clean shot.”

“Stand down, Percival. We’ll regroup and find another way,” Meg says.

“Copy that. Returning to the hotel now,” Eggsy says, wiping the sweat from his eyes. Kingsman’s suits aren’t exactly breathable in this climate. He sighs as he turns around and starts to disassemble his rifle. All that planning shot to hell in seconds by the whims of a man who unpredictably (and uncharacteristically) decided to start being a family man.

His musings are sharply interrupted by a gunshot going off nearby and the resulting screams of the crowd down in the square.

“The fuck?” He moves back to the window and has to use his glasses to zoom in on the chaos below. 

There’s panic, with the police trying to keep order by pushing the crowds back while aides swarm the President elect’s car where a blood-soaked Valdez and his son are slumped over his hysterical, crying wife. Neither father nor son are moving.

“Looks like someone else didn’t want Valdez to be in office either and didn’t much care for collateral damage,” Meg says. “From the looks of it, the sniper is nearby. I think they may even be in the same building as—Percival!”

Eggsy’s already at the stairs, except instead of going down in order to exit the premises as he ought to be doing, he’s bounding up them two at a time. From the sound and angle of the shot, the shooter has to be a few floors above him. “I’m finding out who scooped me!” he snarls, but all he can see is that blood-soaked, lifeless little boy.

“Forget the other shooter, they’re likely already gone!” Meg’s voice is more urgent than he’s ever heard her. “Percival, _think_! You’ve got to get out of there. The police will have the building surrounded in no time at all.”

“Fuck!” he curses, because she’s right. There are at least three, albeit highly decaying, stairwells running up the building and if Eggsy hasn’t run into the shooter yet, they’re likely long gone by now. Meanwhile, he’s wasted precious time he needs for his own escape.

He turns on his heel and reverses his direction, abandoning his rifle because at this point it will only slow him down. The stairwell is dark and there are more missing steps than not, making a frantic path down treacherous at best.

“Percival, they’ve surrounded the building.” Meg’s voice is leaden with fear and helplessness, sending an icy sensation shooting down his spine. “Once they go in, I’ll be in the dark.”

“It’s okay,” he says, trying to calm down his speeding heart. “It’s okay, I’ll take care of it.”

“There’s too many. They have heavy artillery. I don’t think….” There’s static and then muffled words that Eggsy can’t make out.

“Eggsy, listen to me,” comes a clear and steady voice. It’s Harry now speaking, making Eggsy almost misstep, breath stuttering in his chest. “You cannot win this, and escape is no longer an option. They are going to come for you and they are going to take you into custody.”

“Harry,” he whispers, stopping his swift descent to press himself back against a wall, taking deep, slow breaths. He thinks he can already hear them down below, coming up, coming for him. “Harry, what do I do?”

“Be complacent. Don’t give them any reason to execute you there and then. Tempers are high. They will likely take you to an undisclosed location where they will interrogate you. I must warn you, it will be unpleasant.”

He’s been trained for torture, but he’s never had to put that training to use yet. The looming prospect of it makes him feel sick with fear. He’s not sure if his legs will be able to hold him up any longer.

“Tell them only enough to think what they’re doing is working. But remain strong, Eggsy, and remember your training. We’re going to get you out. You just have to hold on. Do you understand me?”

“Yes,” Eggsy breathes, “Yes, I understand.”

“Good. Just hold on. That is all you have to do. Help is coming, I promise you.”

“I won’t talk. I won’t. Harry, if I don’t...if I don’t make it outta this, I need you to tell my mum—”

“Nonsense. Whatever you want to say to her, you’ll get to tell her in person, and likely she already knows besides.”

They are definitely almost upon him. Eggsy can see the beams of their torches bouncing across the walls, hears their heavy boots stomping up the stairs, and feels the reverberations of the very steps that probably shouldn’t handle so much weight at once. “Harry, I need to tell you something. Just you. I need you to know that I...that I—”

But he never gets to finish, because of the first vanguard of police comes into sight and their eyes meet over their primed weapons. He can see the wild-eyed loathing in their gazes.

Then the cops are are on him, bludgeoning him with the butt of their rifles before shoving him against the steps so hard that his glasses are knocked clean off his face and smashed underfoot.

 

_____

 

Eggsy slowly awakes, and he no longer knows what day it is. His head barely feels like it’s attached to his body, which, considering the state both are in, is probably a good thing.

As Harry predicted, he’s been brought to a location that is distinctly not a police station or even a state prison. No, for what he’s been accused of doing, it goes far, far beyond that. They took one look at his suit and the grade of his rifle and knew he belonged to a larger organisation. For the past three—Four? Five?—days, they have been trying to find out who that organisation is.

He tells them the name on his passport. They can already tell from his accent that he’s British. He tells them he likes dogs, gymnastics, and origami. They deny him anything to drink, only to douse him with freezing water later when he nods off. They use their fists and feet to take shots at his nose, his eyes, his ribs, his kidneys, his knees, but they aren’t places he hasn’t been struck by Dean before.

Then they start breaking bones. The obvious places first: fingers, then his toes, which hurt far worse than even he could have anticipated. He gives them the very detailed process of what goes into making a suit of the caliber he wears, from where to measure on the body to the cuts to the types of stitches needed. He tells them that in Japanese culture, a llama symbolises endurance, hard work, and strength under difficult circumstances.

“Someone prolly thought of that one because they needed those qualities to deal with a fucking llama in the first place.” He laughs, even though a wheeze hangs on the tail of his every gasp for air.

He’s in the middle of telling them about how he wants to try wet folding when they shatter his kneecap with a large mallet, and then he can’t do much more than scream and whimper and shake uncontrollably because his pain tolerance is so damnably high after a decade of living with Dean and he can’t even bloody pass out.

They are about to go for the other one when the room suddenly fills with smoke and the shouts of his captors’ alarm. Eggsy manages to glimpse a pinstripe suit and the distinctive slim shape of an umbrella before he slumps in his chair and closes his eyes in overwhelming relief.

 

_____

 

He’s in and out of consciousness through the next few days, riding a continuous wave of morphine and surgeries for his knee. Through the constant haze, he thinks he sees Meg, then Merlin, then Roxy, then Arthur, but most consistently of all, Harry.

He thinks Harry lays a hand across his forehead and pushes his hair back. He thinks Harry kisses his forehead. He thinks Harry tells him, “You acquitted yourself admirably, but let’s not do that again, shall we? I don’t think my heart can take it.”

But he’s so incredibly high that he also thinks Merlin has taken to dressing like a Teletubbie and that Daisy is sitting in the corner, folding hundreds of thousands of cranes until his room is nearly full up with them. “For good luck!” she tells him. “I’ve been collecting wishes for you, Eggsy!”

Sometimes he remembers he’s safe at Kingsman, sometimes he thinks he’s back in his empty house that he now tries to avoid at all cost, and sometimes he’s back in that old ruined building in Caracas, except instead of looking down upon a celebratory parade for a newly elected leader, he sees the two lovers Harry had once described to him, holding hands, meandering slowly across the square amidst its troubled, frustrated crowds, gazing at each other lovingly with not a care in the world for anything else.

When the morphine gets dialed back and he finally surfaces from his dreamy haze with a clearer head than he’s had in, well, who knows how long at this point, he turns his head just a little and sees the little blue paper turtle sitting on the table next to his bed.

(For protection, longevity, and the unification of heaven and earth, he later reads from a tablet once he remembers to look it up. He has to use a stylus to painstakingly type in each letter of the search term because even Kingsman’s most advanced devices can’t register the warmth and pressure of his bandaged up broken fingers.)

 

_____

 

The worst thing about any mission is the part that comes after, Eggsy remembers Harry saying, and he is, as seemingly ever, right. It’s trying to acclimate to normalcy after months of living in hell and witnessing some of the worst acts of degradation he’s ever known. It’s trying to work dexterity back into his stiff, healing fingers and getting his damaged knee back into working order again to do even the most modest of functions such as bending and supporting his weight without excruciating pain.

He has an entirely new knee actually, and he’s already made several jokes to Harry about aging faster than him. “If I keep this up, I’m in the running to become a cyborg.”

“That’s nothing,” Harry brushes off. “More than half my teeth aren’t real by this point and my jaw, as well as parts of my spine, are pretty much made entirely of metal. Plus I’m the one with the bionic eye, lest you forget.”

“Guess this is why we can’t ever fly commercial.”

“No, I should think not.” Harry shudders.

It’s good to joke, because otherwise Eggsy is tempted to just outright give up. He’s been dropped back down to lower-grade painkillers that don’t do much other than reduce his aching body to a constant throbbing 24/7, making it difficult to sleep. PT is gruelling and yet he hardly thinks he’s accomplished anything at all by the time he’s a breathless puddle of sweat and agony on the mat. He’s still got to use crutches, and the strain of them do the rest of his aching, fractured skeleton no favours either.

He’s exhausted, worn down in mind, body, and soul. Morgana was right too: he can’t keep this up all the time, pretending he’s someone he’s not.

What he is: heartsick, lonely. Imperfect.

Still a bit reckless, still forgetting to think things through properly. Still needing the approval of others to think anything good of himself.

Wanting to do some good in the world, trying and failing more often than not. By gods, does he try, and yet everything still feels like it slips through his fingers the harder he tries to hold on to them.

When he opens his locker, a paper green koi sits on the top shelf. This one, he already knows from all his prior readings. Strength, courage, perseverance to swim upstream.

What a stupid, small little gesture from his still mysterious benefactor, but Eggsy smiles nonetheless, because for the moment, his world is just a little brighter.

 

_____

 

There aren’t any missions and there won’t be for some time yet, but Eggsy’s come so far in his healing that he’s graduated to a thick knee brace that finally gives him back a more or less unhampered mobility. Good thing too, as the bite of restlessness has been stirring in his gut for awhile. This is a dangerous time, the doctors warn him, when he’ll feel better than he has in weeks and he’ll be tempted to push himself too far too soon. He must have patience.

So instead of risking setting his recovery back, he takes to annoying Merlin, becoming a near permanent fixture in his office along with JB despite how many glares and polite, then not so polite, suggestions of leaving.

“This isn’t a daycare centre,” Merlin grouses. “I’ve got work to do.”

“We ain’t gonna bother you,” Eggsy says, giving JB a good scritch behind his ears as the pug closes his eyes in bliss. “Just want to see how the other half lives. Gain a better appreciation for the work you do, you know?”

It’s actually interesting, seeing what a handler gets to access while his or her agent is on a mission. Handlers, Eggsy learns, are a bit like air traffic controllers. They’ve always got to be thinking about ten things at once, keeping constant track of where their agents are as well as the status and location of any enemy elements, plotting the next move for the agent to make, preventing the enemy from carrying out theirs. They put the most strategic and tactical agent to shame, and Eggsy is admittedly humbled watching Merlin in his element, as he is arguably the best of them all.

Each agent is assigned to a group of dedicated handlers (more than one, because there are strict shift limits for handlers in order to maintain their sharp focus) who all come to know and trust each other out of necessity—agents are, after all, literally placing their lives in their hands. But it’s more than that: it’s trusting a handler to be their extended eyes and ears and hands. It’s about handlers getting to see their most vulnerable parts, both physical and not, during NLP missions. It’s living practically inside each other as a single entity.

For the last ten years, Merlin has been Harry’s primary handler, with two other minor ones in rotation as needed, but it’s mostly been Merlin in Harry’s ear because the man is a workaholic genius who apparently doesn’t need much sleep.

Eggsy is watching them both at it now, standing behind Merlin, but a bit aways so that Merlin’s shoulders won’t tense up at feeling Eggsy’s presence near his back. He remains quiet while they trade witty banter as Harry dines with posh bankers in Zürich at some gala event whilst waiting to make contact with his target.

Harry probably doesn’t even realise Eggsy is even listening in, and Merlin makes no mention of it. He realises Harry must have been doing this with Meg when he had been in Venezuela, quietly watching Eggsy’s progress through the monitors, saying nothing, never indicating he was ever there except when Eggsy had needed him most. He wonders how many times Harry had watched him at work.

“Stay sharp,” Merlin says, drawing Eggsy from his inner musings. “Target has entered the ballroom, eleven o’clock.”

“My word,” he hears Harry say, “That is the most avian looking profile I have ever seen.”

“There’s a reason why he’s called ‘The Old Eagle’. Just don’t let him get you in his talons either.”

“It can’t be worse than being subjected to your puns.”

Eggsy watches the view on the monitor shift as Harry stands up and starts moving through the crowd. His gaze drifts to the other monitors surrounding Merlin that depict more, ahem, bird’s eye views of the entire room through the various security feeds that Merlin’s hacked into.

He watches Harry get up from his table and slip through the crowd as easily as a fish sluicing through water, but it isn’t Harry’s debonair profile that draws Eggsy’s attention nor the continued back and forth snarking he and Merlin maintain through Harry’s path across the room, it’s what Harry has left behind on the table.

Most of the other place settings are in disarray after the guests have had their fill of the multi-course dinner, napkins strewn about chairs and plates and even on the floor while the waitstaff hurry to clear the mess. But at Harry’s seat, he’s left behind an anomaly: his used napkin is rather expertly folded up into a Bird of Paradise sitting innocently atop his plate, yet signifying a host of belated ramifications.

 _Oh_ , Eggsy thinks, sinking back into his seat. _Oh_.

 

_____

 

After weeks of avoiding it like it was condemned, Eggsy willingly goes home. As soon as he’s let off his lead, JB begins trotting through the house and sniffing everything in earnest. Eggsy imagines he’s thinking there’s a lot of territory that will need re-marking.

The rest of the house is empty and covered in a thin layer of dust. His mum had been the one to mostly decorate and fill it with all the practical necessities for a cosy domestic life. She packed some of it, but the good majority was left behind. Were it not for the heavy blanket of silence and sense of neglect, Eggsy could almost fool himself into thinking his family still lived here.

He limps his way into the sitting room and is tempted to fix himself a drink or ten, but it’s not a road he wants to start down again tonight, so instead he just sits on the sofa and looks at Daisy’s crane sitting on the mantel above the fireplace and thinks.

He had assumed, in the beginning, that there must have been random people at Kingsman returning him a gift for a gift. After all, it’s no secret by now that Eggsy does origami, and most of the staff have seen him at it or been recipients of his finished models. But after awhile, Eggsy started to get the sense that it was just one person leaving him all those paper animals. The style was consistent in its mastery, not many people knew the full breadth of what he was personally going through in order to leave such thoughtful designs, and then there was the matter of _how_ his mysterious giver had accessed his office, his locker, and even his luggage to leave those gifts behind.

Eggsy wants to hit himself, because having a best mate who also had access to all of Kingsman’s passcodes would be useful in breaking into just about any and every electronically locked room on the grounds. Sometimes the timing couldn’t possibly have been right for Harry to have delivered some of them himself, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t have asked someone else to do it on his behalf.

So now he knows the _who_ and even some of the _how_. All that’s left is the _why_.

 

_____

 

Eggsy knocks on Harry’s front door at half one in the morning. Normally, he’d have worried about possibly waking Harry up, but he knows from experience that Harry’s only just got in from his post-mission debrief. His timing is validated when he sees the light still on in Harry’s second story office.

It takes a few moments for Harry to answer, and when he does, Eggsy can’t help but notice how Harry has ditched his jacket, tie, holster, and even rolled up his sleeves to expose his forearms, looking for all the world like a businessman who has just come off work and was in need of a good stiff drink.

“Eggsy,” Harry greets with some surprise. “Can’t sleep? I’ve only just got in myself.”

“I made you something,” Eggsy nervously blurts out instead of answering him, shoving a shoe box into Harry’s arms. “I think you’d appreciate them most of all.”

With a brow wrinkled in confusion and curiosity, Harry pries open the lid to stare down into a box filled to the brim with paper butterflies, as many as Eggsy could make in the six hours between his discovery and waiting for Harry to get home.

“Ah,” Harry mildly says, and when he looks up, Eggsy can see that he knows Eggsy now knows. “You had better come in then.”

Eggsy meekly follows Harry into his home. It’s the first time he’s stepped into it since Kentucky, and very little has changed. There’s all the esoteric art on the walls and the many decorative objects and touches that are, Eggsy now knows, artifacts from Harry’s travels. Eggsy’s favourite part about Harry’s home, though, is how well-lived in and loved it feels, and how very much it is a representation of the man who lives within it. Harry feels safe enough here to let his truest passions, and some of them are truly _weird_ , shine through.

“Would you like a drink?” Harry offers as he carefully places the box of butterflies on the table and moves to his mini-bar.

“No, probably shouldn’t.”

“Alright. Let me know if you change your mind.” Harry takes an unusually long time in setting out his glass, plucking ice from the fancy little bucket he has, and then precisely measuring out a good two fingers from a decanter.

He’s nervous too then.

“When did you learn origami?” Eggsy asks before he can think better of it. “It was you, wasn’t it? The paper animals.”

“Decades ago, actually. On a mission in Hokkaido. There was...quite a bit of downtime. Yourself?”

“This nice old lady in my neighbourhood used to teach me. Kept me out of a trouble, well, _more_ trouble, as a kid. It helped me focus all my nervous energy.”

“Me too,” Harry says.

“Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

“I didn’t think you’d…” Harry trails off before seeming to think better of his words. “Sometimes the things we wish to convey are best said through means other than words.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you remember the last time you were here in this house?”

“Yeah.” Eggsy swallows, looking away. “I do.”

“I’m still ashamed of the way I behaved that day, and how I left things between us. It could very well have been the last things I ever said to you. The thought of it still haunts me,” Harry admits.

“It’s not like you were wrong,” Eggsy says. “I’m still so sorry I keep disappointing you, like letting myself get caught in Venezuela. I keep acting before I think. I keep fucking it up.”

“No, no that isn’t it at all.” Harry sets down his drink on the table and doesn’t even use a coaster in his haste to draw close to Eggsy, forcing him to look up into his eyes, which are bright with earnestness. “You don’t disappoint me. I only disappoint myself. You...you make me proud, every single day. You are more wonderful than I could have ever hoped, despite how often I’ve failed you.”

“Did you really do all those things because you owe my dad?” Eggsy asks. He has to know.

But Harry just frowns. “No." A pause. "Do you look at me like that because you feel you owe me something for introducing you to Kingsman?”

“ _No_. Of course not.”

“Alright,” Harry nods as if coming to some internal decision. “Then permit me to make one more unspoken gesture.” 

And before Eggsy can ask what that would be, Harry leans down to kiss him.

When their lips touch, it’s almost chaste, just a tentative press of heat and the promise of intimacy that’s enough to light up his nerve endings. Eggsy leans into Harry’s body, and the action realigns their mouths into something hotter and wetter as he parts his lips and Harry licks into him, and Eggsy can taste the smoky hint of scotch on his tongue.

It incites in him a hunger, a desire for _more_ , that he has to grab fistfuls of Harry’s shirt and pull him in even closer until the length of Harry’s body is felt all along his, a solid, warm wall of heat that bends and folds around him as Harry holds him just as tightly in return.

“While this is all well and nice,” Eggsy breathlessly says when their mouths finally part ever so slightly. “Can we go somewhere more horizontal? My knee is _killing_ me.”

“Can you even make it up the stairs?” Harry asks.

“Um, maybe…? Ah, Jesus, Harry!” Eggsy yelps as he finds himself unceremoniously swept up into Harry’s arms and carried up the stairs, bridal style. “Look at you, fit as fuck.”

But when Harry pushes the door open to his bedroom, the sight that greets him leaves him speechless while Harry presses tender kisses to his cheek and temple. Draped across the ceiling are Eggsy’s paper cranes, all one thousand of them, strung in colourful garlands across the ceiling above the bed.

When Harry finally notices what Eggsy is staring at, he whispers in his ear, “I awoke from the closest to death I had ever been, filled with so many regrets, and there was this most strange and marvelous sight above me. I knew from that moment on that I wanted to see them each and every time I woke up thereafter and be reminded of the one who would fold a thousand paper cranes for me.”

"At the risk of channelling the Proclaimers," Eggsy says in a tone that is still a bit stupefied from it all, "I'd fold a thousand more."

Harry spreads Eggsy out across the bed and proceeds to methodically remove each piece of his clothing with the reverence of observing a ritual, even elevating his bum knee on a few pillows. Eggsy’s body has gone a bit soft from being unable to maintain his usual punishing fitness routine and his knee is still a swollen and scarred up mess, but when Harry’s gaze washes over his bare body with so much naked _want_ in his expression, he flushes not with self-consciousness but arousal.

“Yeah, I know you think my surgery scars are sexy,” he says. “Really does it for you, yeah?”

Against the swell of his thighs where Harry has been tracing warm, wet patterns with his tongue, Harry laughs. As if to make a point, he shifts down to Eggsy’s raised knee and kisses the apex of it. “Every part of you really does it for me, if you haven’t already figured that out by now.”

Harry continues to prove it by dragging his gun-callused hands down the length of Eggsy’s body lightly, leaving goosebumps in their wake, as his mouth works its way up. His slightly bent knee makes a soft, pale path of flesh that Harry bites gently into with his teeth. His stomach quivers beneath Harry’s lightly grazing fingers that then run up the ladder of his ribs and roll his nipples into tight, swollen buds.

Each sharp point of contact sends a current of electricity straight down to his groin. His cock fills and hardens, curving against his stomach, aching for touch, but when his hand automatically moves to give himself some relief, Harry merely grabs his wrist and pins it to the mattress while continuing to ignore the obvious invitation in favour of licking a stripe from the crease of his inner thigh to the valley of his hip bone. He finally deigns to nuzzle Eggsy’s cock with his cheek, slightly rough with his five o’clock-plus shadow, and each spiky prickle across his sensitised skin sends shivers down his spine.

“God, Harry,” he complains, hating the fact that he’s just got to lie there and take it while Harry gets to drive him mad, fully clothed. “You can’t just peel me open like a piece of fruit and not get your kit off too. Come on, let’s have it. I wanna touch you too.”

“I thought your hobby was supposed to make you more patient.” Harry’s eyes find his, full of warmth, darkened with desire.

“More tactile, maybe. So gimme.” He breaks out of Harry’s hold to raises his arms and makes grabby hands.

Harry barely refrains from rolling his eyes, but he does retreat in order to start shedding his own clothes in a show that, from his reclined position on the bed, Eggsy gets to appreciate in full.

“You could pretend like you're performing,” he remarks after watching Harry almost perfunctorily unbutton his shirt with quick, efficient flicks of his fingers.

“I am _not_ a stripper, and even so, you’d be a miserly audience.”

“I could give you some notes if you fetch my wallet from the floor. Could even make some animals if you want.”

“How about I exact payment via other methods?” Harry asks as he steps out of his trousers and Eggsy can take in the full effect of him, all long, lean muscles covered in a smattering of salt and pepper hair and an archive of scars that do nothing to mar his attractiveness so much as solidify his experience.

Eggsy swallows to re-wet his throat. “I’m flexible.”

“So I’ve seen.”

When Harry crawls back onto the bed, Eggsy wants nothing more than to climb him like a tree, hang off him like a sloth, and all sorts of other primal jungle-like analogies he can think of, but when he flexes his bad knee, it doesn’t hesitate to remind him that he’s not quite up for any sort of wild antics tonight. He hisses when his stiff tendons start to pinch and reaches down to rub the offending part of his body. “God this sucks. I wanna do _so_ many things with you right now.”

“There will be time for them all,” Harry assures, kissing the hollow Eggsy’s collarbone and then skirting a path up the slope of his throat and ending with a positively filthy open-mouthed kiss that both stokes all his need and swallows him up whole. He is careful when he presses the length of his body against Eggsy’s, careful not to jar his knee while blanketing him in hot skin on skin.

“But for now, like this,” Harry breathes against his lips, shifting until Eggsy can feel the glorious sensation of Harry’s cock dragging against his, back and forth in slow thrusts, as Eggsy curls his hands over Harry’s shoulders, fingers winding through his hair, and his good leg snaking around Harry’s hip to pull him closer.

The bed rocks lightly. Their light pants into each other’s mouths colour the air. Harry’s body over him becomes hot and sweat slick, and Eggsy’s leg frequently slips against his back.

There a smouldering heat building in Eggsy’s groin, and each time Harry rocks against him, it’s like he’s throwing another log into the fire. When Harry reaches down between them to collect the precome leaking from both their cocks onto Eggsy’s belly and uses it to ease the glide against each other, it’s even better.

“You’re gorgeous like this,” he hears Harry say, but it’s Harry who makes a lovely sight above him, skin flush, glazed eyes locked with his, mouth parted in awe at as if he can’t believe this is happening and how good it actually is.

It’s so gradual, that slow, sauntering build of pleasure, Eggsy doesn’t think he can take it. He drives his heel into the fleshy swell of Harry’s arse and the tips of his fingers into the meat of his shoulders.

“God, c’mon Harry,” he whines, punctuating his request with a bite to Harry’s earlobe.

In payback, Harry nips at the corner of his jaw, and Eggsy’s breath hitches at the hint of sharpness singeing across his nerves in counterpoint to all the sensations sparking up from where they grind against each other. But finally, Harry wraps his long-fingered hand around their cocks and creates a tight fitting hold for them both to fuck into.

Suddenly there’s more friction and the need for completion becomes immediate with every sped up movement. Eggsy tightens his hold on Harry, thrusts against him faster, and Harry swallows his cries with his mouth until they are both coming within moments of each other, spilling all over Harry’s hand and Eggsy’s stomach, hot and wet and devastatingly perfect.

 

_____

 

It’s late at night, or, really, early in the morning. There’s still enough light from outside to illuminate the silhouettes of furniture in Harry’s bedroom: the wardrobe, the dresser, a chair in the corner, and above him, his canopy of paper cranes suspended in the darkness.

His knee is still elevated on a mound of pillows. He’s nestled warmly against Harry’s body, and Harry has strung a slender arm around his middle, slipped a bare leg between his, and fallen asleep with his face tucked into the crook of Eggsy’s shoulder and neck. Harry’s slow, deep breaths are like warm caresses. He likes the way the tip of Harry’s nose is slightly squashed against this skin, like Harry wants to burrow inside him. He likes running his hand down the fine hairs of Harry’s arm. He likes tracing the length of those graceful, talented fingers, knowing how skillful they are across paper and skin.

Eggsy doesn’t believe in superstition, not really, and if there were actually an existence of some sort of higher power, then god sure wasn’t giving with both hands. He doesn’t want to look up at his cranes and ascribe some sort of metaphysical connection between them and recent events.

But he does think that, maybe, all this bloody folded paper isn’t so much a conduit for divine energy as it is the outcome of whatever this whole thing is. He hesitates to call it _love_ because the word scares him, and yet even still, the very thought makes his heart beat faster and his newly healed toes curl in pleasure. But he so desperately wanted Harry to remain in his life that he pressed the secrets of his heart into a thousand sheets of paper. Harry so desperately wanted to remain in his that he secretly slipped pieces of his heart into whatever places of Eggsy’s life he could fit them.

“What are you thinking about?” Harry murmurs drowsily near his ear, though he probably wants to ask, _why aren’t you sleeping so I can have full access to my body pillow without disruption?_

“If I make you enough butterflies, will you replace all the dead ones in your loo with them?”

“I like my dead butterflies.” If Eggsy’s not mistaken, there is even a pout in Harry’s still half-asleep voice. He bites his lower lip to hold back his laughter, but his shoulders end up shaking instead, further rousing Harry into wakefulness.

Harry raises his head and blinks down at Eggsy owlishly. He has spectacular post-shag hair. “What are you smiling about now?”

Eggsy reaches up to smooth down those wild, curling strands. “Origami, fighting, fucking, being hard to kill...so what other hidden talents you got?”

Apparently resigning himself to Eggsy’s series of non-sequiturs, Harry hums and buries his face back into Eggsy’s skin while contemplating the question. “I am a moderately talented ventriloquist.”

Well, that isn’t what Eggsy expects to hear. “What? Really?”

“Mmhmm. Used to get others in trouble to amuse myself during meetings.”

He thinks he’s starting to understand the real reasons behind Merlin’s hair loss. “Harry Hart, you little shit.”

“Mmmm,” is the sleepy reply.

“Anything else?”

“Mmmph.”

Eggsy waits for Harry to continue, but when he realises that no further elaboration will be forthcoming, he sighs, but doesn’t feel all that put off.

There will be time, as Harry pointed out, to discover them all.

**Author's Note:**

> For the following delightful prompt (I admittedly took a few liberties and strayed a bit from it somewhat, which I didn't realize until after the thing was finished, whoops):
> 
> Post-film. Harry has acquired all sorts of weird and wonderful skills over the course of his years as a Kingsman. And Eggsy has, too, either from a mate or by some coincidence (maybe while he was trying to stay out of Dean's way, he ended up spending a lot of time with someone unusual). What happens when they both discover they have the same skill? (Knitting? Juggling? Something else?) Perhaps it's this that makes them connect on a level besides mentor/mentee for the first time. Suddenly, Harry seems like a real person to Eggsy and not just an ideal. Suddenly, Eggsy seems like he could be a friend and not just a Kingsman…


End file.
